


time and time again

by justasuperfan



Series: everything i didn’t say [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, Luther just can’t learn, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Protective Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25537000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justasuperfan/pseuds/justasuperfan
Summary: in which time travel goes wrong—again—and traps the siblings in an apocalypse. hurt/comfort and good sibling relationships
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: everything i didn’t say [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841560
Comments: 8
Kudos: 250





	time and time again

**Author's Note:**

> TW: ptsd, implied suicidal thoughts, drug usage

Klaus wasn’t exactly sure how he expected time travel to feel, but he knew that once the pulsing blue light swallowed him whole, he was definitely wrong.

It was like someone tore all of his molecules from his body and rearranged them. If he could’ve opened his eyes, he almost imagined he would see something like a kaleidoscope around him. As it was, his body didn’t cooperate with him. Until something hard landed under his feet and his knees buckled, throwing him face first onto the ground. The whole experience couldn’t have lasted more than a minute.

When Klaus was finally able to open his eyes and stand on wobbly legs, it still took him a minute to process what he was seeing. Because no, that couldn’t be right. He was dreaming, or it was a drug-induced hallucination. He never could tell what was real and what wasn’t anymore. So yeah, he decided, it was a hallucination. Because there’s no way he time travelled into the wasteland that was the apocalypse. There was no way the metal and wood and fire covering the ground was actually real.

Klaus looked around but didn’t see any of his siblings scattered around him like he’d expected them to be. They must have landed a little ways away. But it wasn’t real, so maybe they were sitting next to him and he was just being stupid. Once his voice stopped being shaky and hoarse, he sang, “Oh dear sibliiiings! Your favorite brother is over heeeere!”

He almost expected no one to climb onto the rubble on the horizon, calling his name and waving their arms. But then he saw a broad figure hoisting itself onto the ruins of what was probably the theater. Klaus felt a sloppy grin on his face and began stumbling towards Luther. Or, what he thought was Luther. He still could’ve been dreaming. But the unbearable heat, the ashen sky and desolate landscape felt so real. He could feel the shards of glass under his feet. So maybe it was real.

“Klaus!” Luther called, hopping down onto a demolished car. Klaus reached his brother and began scanning the horizon.

“Where’s the rest of the bunch?” He asked. 

Luther just frowned. “Not sure. You look over there, I’ll look over here. Meet back here in twenty minutes.”

He almost wanted to shout out some snarky comment about how ‘great’ of a leader his brother was, or how was he supposed to know what time it was without a clock or a watch, but was able to bite his tongue. He knew Luther probably felt as wrong as he did, like the body he was using was his from an alternate universe. Klaus was still shaky on his feet, bile rose in his throat, and his vision was wobbly and unfocused. On top of that, he had a massive headache. He’d have to ask Five what the standard side effects of time travel were.

Even with his uncooperative body, he climbed overtop of a huge pile of bricks. Probably an apartment or something. He really hoped he could find a pill or something, because the amount of dead bodies and ghosts he knew he would be seeing was terrifying. Although, it couldn’t be as bad as spending eternity with Reginald. Klaus laughed. Even in dire circumstances, the man’s stupid face tortured him. And when he was tortured, he laughed. One of his many great qualities.

When he’d climbed over a broken bus, he found the ashen face of his favorite unconscious sister. “Dammit Van, couldn’t Luther have found you? You’re heavy!”

He leaned down to shake awake the woman, but then thought better of it. Maybe she was still angry with them. Maybe if she woke up, she would go on a rampage and kill all of them. But no, she wouldn’t. Not if Klaus explained everything to her instead of tricking her like Luther had. That really had been a stupid move. Perfect forr his stupid brother. So Klaus knelt down next to his sister, still rocking that white suit, and shook her until her eyes began to open.

Amd lo and behold, her eyes were their normal blue. 

Klaus breathed a sigh of relief and helped her sit up. She blinked and looked around, obviously confused and disoriented. Then she looked down at her trembling hands annd whimpered as tears began to fall. Klaus blinked. Had he said something? “Hey, no no no, none of that. It’s okay, Vanya. Shhh…”

He wrapped his arms around her thin frame and she pressed her face into his shoulder. Her body shook with sobs. Finally, she pulled away and wiped her tears, adjusting to sit on her knees. “I did this. I-I’m a monster!”

“No, no you’re not,” Klaus said softly, wiping her tears away with his thumb. “It’ll be okay. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes it is!” 

“Ooookay, maybe a little, but Luther was also a pretty big bitch. And Allison was yelling at you, which made you mad. _And_ Diego kept treating you like an outcast. And I wasn’t there for you. All of us contributed to this.” Klaus went in for another hug, but Vanya shook her head and stood, immediately swaying.

“Where are the others?” Her eyes were wide and attentive. Klaus had thought they were pretty when they were a startling white, but he was glad she was back to normal. Otherwise, things would go south pretty quickly. 

Klaus shrugged. “I woke up alone, then found ape man. We split up to find you guys.”

“I can help. What do I do?”

“Go look…” He pointed to the direction he knew neither he nor Luther were already checking. “over there. Meet us at the destroyed bus in twenty minutes.”

Vanya nodded and began finding dirt paths through the destruction, weaving around the broken cars and discarded items. Klaus watched her leave and then went back in the direction he came and began scouring the area again, but didn’t find anything. Well, he did find a book and a crushed bag of pills, but none of his siblings. Maybe they had gone to different times. But it would be too much of a coincidence if Luther and Vanya were already there.

“Klaus!” He finally heard, and whipped around looking for the source of his name. It didn’t sound like any of his siblings. Well, except for one.

“Ben! Did you find any of them, brother dear?” 

Ben jogged up to him and nodded. “Luther found Five and Diego. Allison’s over here with Vanya.”

Klaus followed the ghost, suddenly wishing he could just walk through the destruction instead of climbing over it, and saw a flash of white on the ground. Vanya was kneeling over Allison, her face buried in her sister’s chest as her shoulders shook. If she kept crying like that, she would be very dehydrated later. Which he figured wasn’t good, considering they were in the apocalypse. Instead of saying that, he sat next to his sister and rubbed her back lovingly. She gave him a smile and then turned to wake up their sister. Klaus went back to the bus when he saw Allison standing and looking around.

Diego stood next to Luther, arguing about something probably meaningless. A limp Five laid in Luther’s arms, and Vanya and Allison staggered over to them. Ben took a spot next to Klaus as they stood in what vaguely resembled a circle around the bus. Klaus tried to ignore the senseless arguing, but Diego was loud and Luther was ready to throw a punch.

“If _you_ hadn’t locked her up in the first place, none of this would’ve happened!” Diego was yelling. Oh. So it was about Vanya.

“Well I was just trying to protect our family! Maybe if she had been locked up earlier, this wouldn’t have happened!”

Allison, still mute, crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. Vanya looked at the ground and more tears threatened to spill over. Klaus didn’t blame her, but he’d have to find her a water bottle soon. He knew it was hard on her, having this new power that ended the world. And yet his two idiotic brothers wouldn’t stop fighting about her as if she wasn’t there. So Klaus stepped in between the two, arms extended to keep them from mauling each other.

“Alright, let’s calm down. Why don’t we sing a song? I’ll start. _You’ve got a f—”_

“Now is not the time for your stupidity, Klaus.” Luther interrupted. 

Klaus frowned. “Oh come on, I didn’t even get to my favorite part!”

Diego placed a hand on Klaus’s shoulder. “Stay out of it, okay?”

“No!” He took a stance that hopefully made him look stronger than he really was. “I’m not going to watch you argue about our sister when she’s right there! Besides, we don’t want to hurt Five, and I know you two are two seconds away from punching each other’s brains out. So take a chill pill and go sit in timeout.”

Diego sighed. “Fine, you’re right. But I won’t apologize.”

What a great day to be alive.

Luther frowned. “Of course you back out. Always a coward.”

He knew where this was going. Diego turned and kicked Luther in the knee, making him stumble backwards. And, at possibly the worst moment, Five’s eyes snapped open. 

Klaus had seen a lot of crazy things in his life. Screaming ghosts, a Vietnam soldier doing Tik Tok dances, his possessed sister blowing up the moon…

But by far the craziest thing was seeing his 13-year-old-but-actually-58- year-old brother freak the fuck out while clawing at the ground.

“No no no no no, Delores come on, we have to get home, one hundred and eleven pounds divided by seventeen years and the amount of mass inside a standard portal…”

Klaus’s jaw dropped open. He was having trouble deciphering the kid’s words since they were coming out so fast, but he managed to hear the words ‘Delores,’ ‘siblings,’ and ‘apocalypse,’ at least fifty times. Everyone was staring at their brother, openmouthed, not knowing what to do at all. He just kept digging with his child’s fingernails, muttering equations. Even his frequent panic attacks and flashbacks had nothing on this. What was happening?

Vanya decided to take charge after no one did anything. She sat next to Five and placed a hand on his back. He didn’t even flinch. “Hey, Five, it’s okay. We’re here this time. You’re not alone and we’ll find a way out.”

Klaus was honestly surprised. Usually he was the one comforting everyone and making sure everything was okay. His point had been proven when he had to wake up his sister. But maybe he was the reason she was doing it. He wasn’t narcissistic, but the secret glances she gave him and the way she used some of the exact words Klaus had earlier kind of pointed to him. Which led him to wondering—why hadn’t he immediately started comforting his brother when he began freaking out? 

Of course it would be hard to spend an eternity in this wasteland, all alone, but to come back to it once you thought you’d escaped? If Klaus had to go back to the moment he saw the light go out of Dave’s eyes, he would surely be acting insane. He knew better than anyone. And that’s why he found himself kneeling next to his brother as Vanya wrapped her arms around a flailing Five. 

Apparently, the old man snapped to his senses, because the moment he noticed everyone watching him, he muttered a curse under his breath and then he was gone.

Klaus didn’t exactly want to be the one to find his younger/older brother and be yelled at, so he voted for Vanya. After all, she had been a good sister earlier. But everyone unfortunately voted for him instead of taking his suggestion. So he climbed over the fallen buildings while calling his brother’s name, Ben yelling precautions at him like a dead body he was about to step on.

So yeah. Fun times.

“I really don’t want to do this. He’s just going to yell at me and blink away.” Klaus whined, slumped over in exaggeration. “They should’ve taken my goddamn advice.”

He didn’t want to see another one of Ben’s patented disapproving stares, so he stared at his grimy bowling shoes that he hadn’t bothered to take off yet. “Well, I would do it if I could. So don’t complain about yet another thing you have to do that I would die all over again to do.”

He did tend to complain about life a lot. He never really took into account that Ben had lost all the things he hated doing. But then, a thought occured to him. “Maybe you can do it. Remember the theater? And when the house was falling? I made you tangible for a minute. You saved us. I think...maybe I can do it again.”

Ben stopped walking halfway through a metal pipe, which made him look holographic as he stared at Klaus. “Could you do that? Because I would forgive you for every stupid pill you’ve ever taken.” That was the moment Klaus decided to keep his bag of crushed pills a secret.

“I can try. But we have to find him first.” Five couldn’t have gone far. Even back home, he had only been able to blink about the distance from the kitchen to the stairs. And he didn’t have much energy, so he would be pretty close by.

“Is that him over there?” Ben pointed, finishing walking through the pipe. Klaus turned and saw his brother’s childish figure balancing on the edge of what used to be a balcony. Klaus doubted his own body would last five minutes before that thing crumbled. One of the perks of being trapped in the body of a teenager.

He approached his brother carefully. Five couldn’t see him since he was turned the other way, which was helpful. When he was closer, he began to activate his hidden powers. He didn’t really know where to start, so he tried channeling the same energy he’d felt in the theater. The moment he knew that he had to do something, or else they were screwed. He held out his fists and closed his eyes, imagining a scenario where he was useless and his siblings were in danger. If he did that, maybe the same energy would cause Ben to be able to talk to his brother.

It must’ve worked. Klaus wasn’t exactly sure, since his eyes were closed, but he turned and saw Bdn climbing the rubble instead of walking through it. His brother looked almost holographic again instead of fully solid, probably because he was actually a real person then. 

“Five?”

His older brother groaned in frustration and prepared to blink away, when he turned around. His eyes flitted from Ben to Klaus’s glowing fist and widened. Five looked like he’d seen a ghost. Which, he had. Klaus almost laughed at his own joke, but decided it would be inappropriate at the moment. 

“Ben?”

Five wasn’t normally an emotional person. A single comforting word from him would mean you were either dead or dying or...Vanya. But Klaus knew that, growing up, Five, Ben, and Vanya had been best friends. They’d stayed up in Ben’s room reading and laughing, while everyone else pretended like they didn’t hear them. They snuck out to Griddy’s and no one snitched to Dad (except Luther.) They were even caught crying and venting to each other, which was a shock to everyone. 

But when Five leaped from the broken balcony and ran into Ben’s arms, Klaus forgot all about their close relationship and immediately wondered what the fuck someone had done to get Five to hug them willingly. 

Klaus mostly spent their conversation focusing on keeping Ben in the land of the living, but he caught a few snippets. Comic books, sleepovers, someone called Vapor. Ben didn’t bring up the subject of Five’s freakout, because they all knew what had caused it. He did what he’d wanted to do, though. He made Five feel happy, for once. And if Klaus could’ve helped in making his brother smile, that’s all he needed.

**Author's Note:**

> just in case you’re curious, klaus was going to sing you’ve got a friend in me from toy story. anyways, sorry this was pretty short, but i hope you liked it!


End file.
